India: What’s driving the intense pressure on students?

When 18-year-old Nelima Patel sat down to retake the National Eligibility cum Entrance Test (NEET) medical entrance examination in the western Indian city of Ahmedabad on Sunday, she felt completely drained before the exam had even begun.

The original test in early May was canceled over suspicions that the questions had been leaked. Patel had to prepare all over again, navigating uncertainty, exhaustion and anxiety.

"It was mentally exhausting, but I had to keep my wits about me while writing," Patel told DW. "There was just too much preparation that went into it."

"Just a few days earlier, another student I knew died by suicide. It was all upsetting," she said.

A generation under unrelenting pressure

Across the country, thousands of students found themselves in a similar position.

What was supposed to be the culmination of years of preparation suddenly morphed into just another period of insecurity following the cancellation of the original exam.

This weekend, more than 2 million medical aspirants retook the exam under multi-layered security across thousands of centers, featuring strict surveillance measures like facial authentication, biometric checks and thousands of signal jammers.

India offers roughly 130,000 medical undergraduate seats — distributed across more than 800 medical colleges nationwide — for the 2.27 million students who took the NEET medical entrance exam this year.

That means fewer than one in 17 candidates can secure a place in a medical college.

For many students and their families, the stress is immense.

"It is unfair to put children through such a torturous process," said Rukmini Madhavan, whose son, Mahesh, also took the examination again.

"If they don't make the cut-off, the problems are compounded and can have a mental toll," she said.

Growing crisis of student distress

The emotional strain surrounding NEET has once again exposed a larger and more troubling reality of India's growing crisis of student distress.

Worryingly, 12 NEET aspirants have reportedly died by suicide in the days since the examination controversy erupted.

Some left behind notes detailing the immense strain they were under, while others had expressed anxiety about enduring another round of preparation and testing.

Their deaths have sparked fresh questions about an education system in which a handful of examinations often determine access to universities, careers and, many believe, a family's future.

Many of these students come from low-income or rural backgrounds where parents take out massive private loans, sell land, or drain savings to fund years of expensive coaching institute fees.

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‘More than a wake-up call'

India's suicide issue stretches far beyond NEET.

The country recorded 14,488 student suicides in 2024, according to the latest National Crime Records Bureau data released last month.

Students accounted for 8.5% of all suicides in the country and represented the fifth-largest occupational category among suicide victims.

The figure was 4.3% higher than that of the previous year and continued a decade-long rise that has alarmed mental health experts, educators and policymakers.

"We have created a culture where success is celebrated in very narrow ways, while failure is more often than not stigmatized," neuropsychiatrist Anjali Nagpal told DW. "This is more than a wake-up call, as it can leave young people feeling trapped between expectations and reality."

A highly competitive ecosystem

Students spend months or even years preparing for entrance examinations such as NEET, JEE and a host of government recruitment tests.

Teenagers across the country often relocate to places known as coaching hubs, such as Kota in Rajasthan, where they enter a world dominated by rankings, mock tests, cut-offs and relentless competition.

"The pressure to succeed is immense. Failure can mean another year of coaching fees, another year of uncertainty and another year of trying again," Jagdish Kumar, a student in Delhi, told DW.

The pressure is compounded by parental expectations, financial sacrifices and the widespread belief that a single examination can alter the course of an entire life.

Educationist Apoorvanand Jha pointed out that the crisis surrounding national examinations has foundational flaws which stem from an unsafe structural obsession.

"Forcing a massive country into highly centralized, single-point national examinations does not elevate standards," he told DW.

"Instead, it creates highly vulnerable single points of failure that jeopardizes the future of millions of young students, delaying university calendars and academic sessions entirely," Jha underlined.

Top court expresses concern

India's Supreme Court has increasingly expressed concern over what it described as a worsening pattern of student distress.

In a series of observations, the top court identified a "disturbing pattern" of student suicides across educational institutions and cautioned against treating them as isolated incidents.

A court-mandated national task force headed by a former Supreme Court judge identified several factors driving the crisis, including extreme academic competition, caste-based discrimination, financial stress, weak grievance redressal systems and inadequate access to mental health support.

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From exam halls to politics

The student deaths have now become a rallying point for the Cockroach Janta Party (CJP), a youth movement that emerged from an online satire campaign but quickly evolved into one of India's most talked-about political phenomena.

The CJP continues to hold a sit-in protest in the capital New Delhi. It has capitalized on the NEET controversy, arguing that repeated examination irregularities and administrative failures are eroding trust in a system that millions of students depend on for social mobility.

CJP chief Abhijeet Dipke has urged Prime Minister Narendra Modi's government to provide a compensation of 10,000,000 rupees (€ 92,418) to the families of the students who allegedly died by suicide amid examination-related controversies.

"Some of these families had taken out loans to educate their children. One can only imagine what these families are going through," said Dipke, whose party is demanding the resignation of Education Minister Dharmendra Pradhan.

The movement began as a response to a senior government member comparing some unemployed young people to "cockroaches." Its online campaign soon struck a chord with a generation grappling with high joblessness, exam scandals and growing economic insecurity.

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Drawing public attention to the problem

The NEET controversy also crystallized wider anxieties about a future increasingly shaped by a handful of make-or-break tests.

For Kumar, who is preparing for next year's examination, the issue is less about politics and more about the emotional toll of an unforgiving educational system.

"It is the survival of the fittest and that is what the system is geared to," he said.

If you are suffering from serious emotional strain or suicidal thoughts, don't hesitate to seek professional help. You can find information on where to find such help, no matter where you live in the world, at this website: https://www.befrienders.org/

In India, you can find crisis services and support options here .

Edited by: Srinivas Mazumdaru